Every church prepares for Christmas. Perhaps your church produces an elaborate pageant or the choir sings special music during worship. We light candles on the Advent wreath and wrap presents for those whose names we find on an Angel Tree. Sunday School classes have parties and church staff members exchange “$10 or less” gifts. Yes, we pray and we sing and we prepare, year after year, for the one whose coming the angels announce as “Good news of great joy!”
And yet in our annual preparations for Christmas, I wonder if we often miss the two individuals who might best help the church today prepare to welcome the Christ child. These two never make the Christmas pageant. Yet, they spent decades preparing for the moment when the Savior of Israel would appear. They knew what it was to wait year after year for Christ’s coming. Yes, more than two thousand years after Jesus’ birth, as we ourselves prepare to meet him once more, perhaps Simeon and Anna might help us know the gift of joy.
The Gospel of Luke tells us it was just eight days after Jesus’ birth that Mary and Joseph brought their young son to the temple (Luke 2:22-39). It is here at the temple that we meet Simeon and Anna, an old man and an old woman, who despite their preparations to one day meet the Messiah still experienced surprise as they gazed into the eyes of an eight-day-old child.
Have you ever held such a young life in your arms? It is a powerful moment. Once you pass through the fear and anxiety about dropping the child and make sure you properly support the head, you begin the innate rocking motions of back and forth, back and forth. Within that rocking rhythm is an opportunity to gaze and wonder. What will the future hold for the little life now wrapped securely in a blanket? What will she become when she grows up? How tall will he be? Will her eyes stay blue? Will he smile and laugh in a life of levity? Will she weep and rage in a life of sorrow? What will the future hold for this little life now resting in your arms?
It does not matter if it is your child or your grandchild or a child of the church; the questions are still the same. Those who God blesses with the chance to watch children grow know that one day all of those questions will be answered. One day, this child in your arms will be an adult and the future will be the present. His height and eye color will be fixed; her smiles and laughter, her tears and rage will all be known. Perhaps he too will one day hold a child in his arms. But all of that is to come. In the moment, rocking back and forth, we only gaze with wonder, hope and dreams.
Thus it was for Simeon and Anna. I wish we had a picture of this scene as Simeon took the child Jesus in his arms and praised God. All we have is his words, but my hunch is that he was a man whose youthful vigor had returned. Simeon had spent his life preparing and expecting and “looking forward to the consolation of Israel.” He was always gazing into the future, always with expectant hope for the one who was promised, for the one who was coming, for the one who would be the “salvation that God had prepared in the presence of all peoples.” A life spent looking forward while living in hope was now complete. The fulfillment of Simeon’s great longing to be in the presence of Christ was not a moment of weariness and resignation, but of joy and song and praise.
In the same way, the prophetess Anna, eighty-four years young, joined him in his song. For in that moment, she too came to see the child Jesus and began to praise God and to speak about him “to all who were looking for the redemption of Israel.” Mother and father stand by amazed — and no wonder. Think of the looks and the whispers throughout the temple — an old man and an old woman singing and praising and maybe even dancing with a child in their arms.
But what will become of this child? Instead of being bright-eyed and eager, full of unlimited possibility and dreams, this child carries the burden of generations. He is the one who will save Israel. Salvation and consolation do not come without great cost. Yes, this child is the Savior, but “he is also destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” Because of him, a sword will pierce the soul of his mother.
Simeon and Anna had prepared themselves well. Their years of preparations could create or produce the moment in which they would know the presence of the Christ, but they were ready to recognize Jesus when he appeared. Our best efforts to prepare for Christmas are much the same.
Simeon and Anna had prepared for joy, so they could see all that was to come for this child. It was a vision of salvation that was neither a utopian fantasy nor a fairy tale. For one day the child would be an adult and the future would be the present. His height and eye color fixed; his smiles and laughter, his tears and rage would be known. He too would hold a child in his arms and say that anyone who wanted to enter the kingdom of God must become like this. A supper, an arrest, a trial, a cross, an empty tomb. All of that was to come. But gazing in the child’s eyes, Simeon and Anna saw that it was already there. And joy, the unexpected gift of Christ himself, rested in their arms and an old man and an old woman sang and danced.
Adapted from “A Week from Next Tuesday: Joy Keeps Showing Up (Because Christ Keeps Showing Up) … ” Used by permission of Wipf and Stock Publishers.
Matthew A. Rich is a husband, father of three, author, soccer and baseball coach, Cub Scout leader, and by the grace of God, the pastor of Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church in Augusta, Georgia.
